Shards of Nirvana

A man on a spiritual journey must uncover his past, confront his nemesis, right a wrong, and free his friends from an unjust punishment, in order to achieve inner peace.

Parallax was trained by his father for a position in the royal court but he’s never wanted it. As his father lies on his deathbed he makes his son promise to visit the Emperor. This begins a journey whose end is uncertain.

What Parallax wants is to achieve moksha, to escape from the cycle of rebirth. He feels it is his fate to reject court life, to reject comfort, wealth, and prestige and go into the forest. There, alone, he will purge himself of the chaos and confusion within. Yet the sins of the past are not so easily purged.

Ravik, once Parallax’s teacher, has become a powerful, evil spirit, a rakshasa. He has achieved all he has desired. His rewards have been great-the cost greater. Yet all can be taken away by those he serves, those whose power is akin to that of the gods.

Parallax and Ravik, their fates are intertwined. They are destined to confront one another in order to decide not only their fates but those of many others. Guilt and innocence, justice and injustice, love and hate, enlightenment and escape or another turn of the great wheel of life-all this and more must be decided.

In Parallax, the award-winning fantasy author H. Rad Bethlen marries western storytelling with eastern mythology. Here the gods and spirits of Hinduism are shown as they are no where else. No story like this has been written since William Buck retold the ancient, epic poems Mahabharata and Ramayana in a novelized form.